5TACK 
ANMtlX 


(REPRINTED   FROM   THE   "JEWISH   EXPONENT") 


THE 

JEW  IN  GERMAN 
LITERATURE 


AN  ESSAY 
BY  ALBERT  M.  FRIEDENBERG 

Author  of  "  Zionist  Studies,"  etc. 


PHILADELPHIA 
1907 


NOTE 

This  is  a  revision  and  ampli- 
fication of  my  earlier  studies  : 
"  Two  Mediaeval  Jewish  Poets," 
and  "The  Jews  as  German 
Men  of  Letters," — published  in 

'Jlie  Jewish  Exponent  in     1905. 

-A.  M.  F. 


THE  JEW  IN  GERMAN 


By  AIiBERT 


I. 

It  is  the  purpose  of  the  present  essay 
to  show  what  the  Jews,  regardless  of 
their  fidelity  to  or  their  desertion  from 
the  faith  of  their  fathers,  have  done 
for  German  culture,  what  are  the  value 
and  the  extent  of  their  contributions 
to  German  literature,  what  new  ideas 
the  Jews  introduced  by  reason  of  their 
racial  peculiarities  into  German  life, 
and,  finally,  to  how  great  a  degree  they 
were  influenced  by  the  spirit  of  their 
times. 

Apart  from  the  main  purpose,  but 
subsidiary  to  it,  in  the  course  of  these 
remarks  it  will  be  necessary  to  con- 
sider the  figure  of  the  Jew  in  the 
works  of  some  of  the  German  poets, 
dramatists  and  novelists. 

This  study,  in  a  measure,  will  reveal 
the  Jewish  literary  attitude  toward 
life.  The  Jewish  men  of  letters  lived 
primarily  in  the  traditions  of  their  glo- 
rious past,  and  sought  to  harmonize  th« 
spirit  of  Judaea  with  that  of  Greece. 
Their  success  in  authorship  depended 
upon  the  union  in  their  writings  of 
these  divergent  forces.  The  Jewish 
element  was  more  or  less  subtilely  rep- 
resented in  their  traditions  and  ancient 
history,  and  the  lineal  descendants  of 
the  old  Hellenic  strain  were  theGerman 
language  and  culture,  which  were  plas- 
tic media  to  make  their  personalities 
dominant  in  German  life  and  thought. 
Heine,  in  his  book  on  Ludwig  Boerne, 
has  commented  upon  this  connection 
between  Judaea  and  Hellas,  and  Mat- 
thew Arnold,  following  Heine,  has  dis- 
cussed the  subject  in  some  detail. 

II. 

When  Titus  destroyed  the  Temple  at 
Jerusalem  and  with  this  stroke  institut- 
ed the  Diaspora,  the  Jew  lost  his  fath- 
erland and  became  a  wandering  stran- 
ger. 

Up  to  the  year  1000  of  the  present 
era  few  Jews  dwelt  in  Germany,  al- 
though as  early  as  the  year  400  some 
had  settled  at  Cologne.  Most  Jews— 
and  the  Graeco-Ronian  rhetor,  Caecil- 
ius,  of  Calacte,  may  be  mentioned  as 
one  of  their  men  of  letters — lived  in 
the  south  of  Europe.  And  even  when 
the  German  Jews  had  grown  strong  in 
numbers. many  year's  had  to  pass  before 
their  rabbis  and  the  leaders  of  thought 
and  learning  among  them  grasped  Ger- 
man notions  and  ideas — had.  in  a  word, 
become  thoroughly  acclimated — and 
could  take  tip  sensibly  their  share  of 
the  burden  of  German  culture. 

No  Jews,  it  may  safely  be  said,  took 
part  in  the  development  of  the  Old  High 
German  literature,  and  the  period  end- 


ing in  the  massacres  of  1096,  when  the 
Jews  under  the  bishops  of  the  Rhine- 
land  lived  tolerably  free  from  persecu- 
tion, was  one  of  preparation.  Shortly 
thereafter,  however,  two  representa- 
tives of  the  German  Jews  helped,  in  a 
small  degree,  to  enrich  Middle  High 
German  literature  with  some  of  its  best 
poetry. 

It  seems  strange,  indeed,  to  find  their 
work  in  the  body  of  the  writings  of  the 
German  Minnesingers,  for  the  spirit  of 
the  Semite  finds  its  expression  in 
gloomy  moodiness.  and  in  the  direct  ap- 
peal to  the  mind.  Of  the  sweetness  and 
the  pain  of  love,  of  summer  and  its 
pleasures,  of  winter  and  its  terrors,  of 
all,  in  short,  of  which  the  Minnesinger 
sang,  the  Jewish  poet  did  not  breathe 
one  word. 

Of  the  poetry  of  Suesskind,  the  Jew 
of  Trimberg,  some  two  hundred  lines 
are  extant.  They  are  preserved  in  the 
famous  Ruediger  of  Manesse  MS., 
which  now  reposes  in  Heidelberg, 
where  the  poet  is  pictured  standing  be- 
fore the  lord  of  the  land,  a  Jew's  cap 
on  his  head,  in  the  act  of  recitation. 
He  had  learned  the  poet's  art  from  the 
greatest  of  the  Minnesingers — Walther. 
of  the  Vogelweide. 

The  Minnesingers  were,  as  a  rule,  tol- 
erant and  humane.  Wolfram,  of  Esch- 
enbach,  based  his  "Parzival"  on  the 
idea  of  the  brotherhood  of  man,  and 
Walther  himself  declared  that  Jews. 
Christians  and  Mohammedans  were 
children  of  the  one  God. 

Suesskind  lived  in  the  early  part  of 
the  thirteenth  century.  Whether  he 
was  a  physician  of  means  (judaeus 
Suzkint  is  mentioned  in  a  deed  dated 
1218,  which  runs  to  the  Lepers'  Hos- 
pital at  Wurzburg),  or  a  poor,  wander- 
ing bard,  the  father  of  a  family,  or  a 
bachelor,  may  be  left  in  the  realm  of 
conjecture. 

The  year  1221  was  the  turning  point 
of  his  life.  Hitherto  he  had  probably 
moved  from  court  to  court,  performing 
feats  of  minstrelsy.  Now,  the  laws 
against  the  Jews,  promulgated  by  the 
fourth  Lateran  Council  of  the  Church 
(1215)  were  strictly  enforced,  and  Suess- 
kind, as  a  German  Jew,  was  compelled 
to  live  apart,  wear  the  conical  cap  and 
forsake  poetry. 

In  his  verse  Suesskind  emphasized 
the  vanity  of  human  wishes,  and  spoke 
of  death  and  immortality.  Rich  and 
poor  ought  to  love,  not  hate,  each  other, 
and  the  crown  of  a  man's  life  resides 
in  a  loving  spouse.  The  best  electuary 
for  a  life  of  virtue  was  made  of  five 
pigments  or  elements— fidelity,  gener- 
osity, strength,  discipline  and  above  all 


209774 


moderation  in  desires.     He  writes,  too, 
of  the  glory  of  God: 

"Almighty   God!     That  shinest  with  the  SUP 

That    slumb'rest    not    when    day    grows    into 

night! 
Thou  source  of  all.   of  tranquil  peace   and  1oy! 

Thou    King   of  Glory   and    Majestic   Light! 
Thou  all-good  Father!   Golden  rays  of  day 

And  starry  hosts   Thy  praise  to  sing  unite. 
Creator  of  heav'n  and  earth.  Eternal  One, 

That    watchest      ev'ry      creature    from    Thv 
height!" 

More  than  a  century  after  the  death 
(1220)  of  Wolfram,  of  Eschenbach,  two 
German  poets,  Clans  Wisse  and  Philipp 
Colin,  a  goldsmith,  of  Strassburg,  de- 
termined to  add  a  German  translation 
of  "Percheval,"  the  French  version  of 
the  legend  of  the  "Knight  of  the  Grail" 
to  Wolfram's  "Parzival."  In  this  work, 
completed  in  1336,  they  had  the  assist- 
ance of  Samson  Pine,  an  Alsatian  Jew. 
The  name  Pine  is  derived  from  Peine, 
a  city  near  Brunswick.  Samson  was 
perfectly  familiar  with  the  languages, 
manners  and  thought  of  both  France 
and  Germany,  and  actively  assisted  the 
ipoets  in  their  work.  In  their  MS.  he 
is  mentioned  by  his  name,  and  spoken 
of  as  a  Jew.  The  completed  poem  is 
immoderately  long,  Wolfram's  portion 
taking  up  only  one-half.* 

III. 

Curiously  enough,  from  the  times  of 
Suesskind  and  Samson  Pine  to  the  mid- 
dle of  the  eighteenth  century,  no  Jew 
wrote  in  the  language  of  contempora- 
neous literary  Germany. 

Johannes  Pauli  (1455-1530),  it  is  true, 
published  "Jest  and  Earnest."  a  collec- 
tion of  short  moral  fables,  in  the  early 
New  High  German  language,  in  1522, 
but  he,  although  a  Jew  by  birth,  was 
converted  to  Christianity  as  a  youth 
and  became  a  Franciscan  monk.  Pauli's 
book,  in  which  the  Jews  are  pictured 
as  observant  Sabbatarians  and  vile 
desecrators  of  the  host,  became  exceed- 
ingly popular  and  passed  rapidly 
through  thirty  editions.  But  he  is  by 
no  means  an  important  writer,  his  vio- 
lent anti-Jewish  bias  rendering  him  an 
unsafe  leader. 

During  the  period  of  which  we  are 
writing  the  Jews  lived  in  Germany, 
but  were  almost  insufferably  persecuted 
and  oppressed  and  had  no  opportunity 
to  engage  in  literary  labors.  They  were 
continually  harassed  by  both  opposing 
forces  in  the  religious  wars  and  the 
struggles  of  the  peasants.  The  cultured 
Germans,  as  a  rule,  treated  the  Jews 
as  beneath  their  notice. 

Thus,  in  a  broadside  published  at 
Munich  early  in  the  sixteenth  century 
we  are  told: 

"Trust    these    not!    Beware! 
If  you   meet   wolf  on   meadow, 
•    Jew    who  takes   an   oath. 
Dealer    with    a    conscience — 
You'll  be  fooled   by  all." 

The  literature  of  these  centuries  is 
strongly  anti-Jewish  in  tendency.  Rab- 


*Prof.  Ludwig  Geiger  is  the  author  of  .in 
Interesting  study.  "The  Jews  and  Qernuan 
Literature."  in  Frankel's  Monthly  ("M.  (!  \V. 
.T.").  of  P.rslnu  (v.  1..  p.  ::.">!  if.,  p.  42fi  ft"., 
1006:  note  The  Ann-ricMii  Hebrew.  December 
7.  It'Ofi.  up.  f>.  0.  I'rnf  fJeiger  criticises  the 
recent  "Suesskind-appreciations." 


binical  disputations,  passion  plays  in 
which  the  representative  of  the  Church 
made  the  prophets  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment witnesses  for  Jesus,  caricatures, 
farces  with  absurd  Jewish  characters, 
and  the  terrible  blood  accusations  were 
used  to  discredit  the  Jews  and  fan  the 
flames  of  superstition,  and  anti-Jewish 
rage.  Sebastian  Brant  ridiculed  them 
in  his  "Ship  of  Fools,"  and  D.  Meiss- 
ner,  in  his  "Political  Treasure  Casket" 
(1624),  declared  that  the  Jew  cheats  in- 
variably. 

Hmis  Folz,  the  barber-surgeon  of 
Nuremberg,  is  rather  an  important  fig- 
ure in  early  modern  German  literature, 
and  in  several  of  his  Shrove  Tuesday 
plays  there  are  Jewish  characters. 
Folz  had  a  reminiscent  knowledge  of 
Hebrew  and  his  corrupt  rendering  of 
"Adon  Olam,"  which  he  calls  "  the 
Jewish  morning  prayer,"  reads  as  fol- 
lows. 

"Adan  holana    ascher  moloch   pethorem. 
Roll  Jhezir  niffra  bohot  nathasa  be 
Heflzo    Kol    asani    rneloch    schemouikrah." 

In  his  "Play  of  the  Emperor  Constan- 
tine,"  where  the  Jews  are  represented 
by  a  number  of  persons  in  the  cast,  and 
not  merely  by  the  archisynagogus,  a  di- 
vine court  sits  in  judgment.  The  Jew 
declares  his  God  alone  is  the  true  God. 
since  all  who  pronounce  His  name 
must  die.  He  proves  the  assertion  by 
means  of  an  ox,  whom  the  Christian, 
however,  restores  to  life  by  mentioning 
the  name  of  Jesus.  And,  as  is  quite 
customary,  the  play  ends  with  the  bap- 
tism of  the  Jew.  In  Judaeo-German 
poetry  Josel  Witzenhauseii,  who  wrote 
on  King  Arthur  and  the  knights  of  the 
Round  Table,  was  of  some  importance. 

Martin  Luther,  in  producing  his 
translation  of  the  Bible  into  German, 
came  strongly  under  the  influence  of 
the  spirit  of  the  Old  Testament,  and, 
indeed,  through  Nicholas  de  Lyra,  of 
Ilashi,  the  exegete.  In  his  work,  "The 
Proof  that  Jesus  Was  a  Born  Jew" 
(1523)  Luther  criticized  the  popes  and 
the  priests  for  not  treating  the  Jews  as 
men.  Twenty  years  later  he  had 
changed  front  completely,  for  in  "Con- 
cerning the  Jews  and  Their  Lies"  (1543) 
an  observant  Jew  is  said  to  be  the  bit- 
terest, most  vehement  enemy  of  the 
Christian. 

This  was  the  dark  age  in  the  history 
of  the  Jews  in  Germany;  their  mere 
numbers  were  not  large,  and  they  stood 
entirely  without  the  sphere  of  influence 
of  German  culture.  Still,  in  this  period 
the  speech  of  the  German  Jew,  so  far 
as  grammar  and  diction  were  con- 
cerned, was  most  closely  akin  to  that 
of  the  German  Christian.  Gerhart 
Hnuptmann  has  preserved  this  fact  for 
us.  In  the  original  version  of  his 
"Florian  Geyer,"  a  drama  of  the  times 
of  the  Schmalcaldian  wars,  the  Jew 
speaks  the  same  language  as  every 
other  member  of  the  German  Peasants' 
Union. 

A  few  Ghettoes,  where  the  majority 
of  the  Jews  lived,  were  already  in  ex- 


In  the  Ghetto  of  Frankfort- 
on-the-Main  the  inhabitants  were  sub- 
jected to  arbitrary  imposts  and  taxes. 
to  say  nothing  of  actual  physical  op- 
pression. Gryphius,  in  his  "Horribili- 
cribrifax."  and  Grimmelshausen,  who 
like  Hans  Folx,  knew  something  of 
Jewish  literature,  in  his  "Simplicissi- 
nius.''  while  opposed  to  the  Jews  on 
principle,  pictured  most  vividly  their 
unfortunate  condition.  So,  too,  Folz 
spoke  of  the  wretched,  universally  de- 
spised Jewish  usurer  in  "The  Account 
of  Ruprecht  Kolperger." 

From  the  Black  Death  (1350)  to  the 
close  of  the  Thirty  Years'  War  (1648) 
the  Jews  of  Germany  were  immigrat- 
ing into  Poland,  their  haven  of  refuge, 
lying  east  of  the  river  Vistula.  During 
this  period  hundreds  of  Jews  suffered 
martyrdom  as  poisoners  of  the  wells, 
recalcitrant  usurers,  unconscionable 
heretics  and  thieving  rogues.  In  hordes 
they  left  the  country.  The  ravages  of 
the  murderous  Croats  in  the  campaigns 
of  Tilly  and  Wallenstein  and  Gus,tavus 
Adolphus,  during  the  Thirty  Years' 
War.  so  reduced  the  Jewish  populations 
in  the  towns — in  the  open  country  no 
Jew  was  permitted  to  dwell— that  the 
survivors  were  happy  if  they  could 
lice  with  their  lives. 

The  Jews  who  up  to  the  thirteenth 
century  had  engaged  in  all  branches  of 
commerce,  were  looked  upon  as  their 
natural  enemies  by  the  rough  soldiery. 
As  has  been  said,  they  had  become  the 
money  lenders  of  the  people.  In  the 
sixteenth  century  the  Jewish  usurer 
was  already  a  well-known  figure  in 
German  literature.  In  the  "Descrip- 
tive Book  of  All  Classes  of  the  Nation" 
(1568)  he  is  thus  made  to  describe  him- 
self: 

"Indeed   I  am  a  Jew. 
I   pay    but   half  of  what   Is  borrowed. 
And   if  the  loans   are  not   redeemed  In  time, 
I  get  all  there  Is  to  be  gotten. 
Thus   I   punish    the    mob— the  merry   gluttons. 
And   my  trade   does   not   decrease, 
For  like  me  are  many  of  my  brethren." 

The  Jews  were  repressed  by  the 
popes  and  the  emperors;  they  were  shut 
up  within  narrow  Ghettoes  and  could 
engage  only  in  changing  money  and 
dealing  in  clothing.  The  few  who  re- 
mained in  Germany  practised  usury — a 
fact  to  which  they  owed  their  uninter- 
rupted existence  in  the  land.  But  this 
occupation  doubled  their  unpopularity 
with  the  people,  for  the  mediaeval  and 
early  modern  view  of  usury  made  the 
payment  of  any  sum  of  money  as  in- 
terest on  a  loan  an  illegal  act. 

When  the  Jews  first  entered  Poland 
they  could  speak  only  Middle  or  New 
High  German.  They  were  bound  by 
the  strongest  ties  of  attachment  to  the 
country  from  "which  they  had  been 
driven,  and  never  wholly  gave  up  the 
use  of  the  German  language.  They 
had.  even  at  this  comparatively  early 
period,  become  thoroughly  assimilated 
with  the  Germans  and  intimately  as- 
sociated their  own  destinies  with  the 
fortunes  of  the  Teutons.  In  time,  of 
course,  the  German  substratum  of  their 


•sl 'h  I'ixl  to  bear  many  a  strange  ac- 
cretion, both  of  Hebrew  and  of  Slavon- 
ic, and  finally  its  character  was  com- 
pletely changed.  No  longer  German 
pure  and  undefiled.  it  had  become  Ju- 
da co-German  and  was  written  with  He- 
brew letters.  Its  basis  was  the  Middle 
German  dialect  of  Middle  High  Ger- 
man. 

While  the  majority  of  German  Jews 
lived  in  Poland,  the  dawn  of  the  eight- 
eenth century  ushered  in  an  era  of 
tranquility  for  Germany.  The  people 
were  worn  out  by  long  years  of  strife, 
and  peacefully  submitted  to  the  des- 
potic rule  of  hundreds  of  petty  prince- 
lings. In  Poland,  on  the  other  hand, 
Chmielnicki  and  his  Cossacks  had  in- 
augurated a  Ions  series  of  terrifying 
anti-Jewish  persecutions.  Accordingly, 
many  Jews  returned  to  Germany,  to 
the  land  which  they -had  forsaken  only 
when  all  seemed  lost  there.  The  golden 
age  of  toleration,  existing  at  their  first 
entry— one  thousand  years  before— had 
passed  away.  They  were  still  the 
clothing  dealers,  the  usurers,  the  inhab- 
itants of  the  Ghettoes  (at  Breslau  and 
Frankfort-on-the-Main,  for  example), 
now  and  again  subjected  to  cruel  perse- 
cutions and  enormous  burdens  of  spe- 
cial taxes,  and  continually  repressed 
by  intolerable  anti-Jewish  statutes  and 
edicts. 

IV. 

At  this  time  German  literature,  as 
such,  scarcely  existed;  writers  slavish- 
ly fashioned  their  works  after  French 
models,  and  the  stream  of  original  in- 
spiration had  almost  ceased  to  flow. 
Hence  the  German  Jews  had.  on  their 
return  to  Germany,  no  national  culture 
of  a  distinct  type  to  reacquire.  The 
Luther  of  an  earlier  day,  who  changed 
a  shifting  dialect  into  a  national 
tongue,  was  now  succeeded  by  an  Opitz, 
whose  services  to  the  literature  of  Ger- 
many were  purely  philological  and  who 
purged  the  language  of  its  enormous 
quantities  of  foreign  words.  Gotthold 
Ephraim  Lessing  was  the  greatest  Ger- 
man writer  of  the  day,  and  the  pioneer 
of  those  who  rendered  justice  to  the 
Jew  as  man  and  as  German.  "The 
Jews,"  his  early  philo-Semltic  play, 
was  the  first  of  its  kind  in  German  lit- 
erature. 

Lessing's  friend  and  contemporary, 
and  the  intellectual,  literary  and  relig- 
ious leader  of  his  people,  was  Moses 
Mendelssohn.  He  was  a  man  of  ex- 
alted ideals,  and  in  "Nathan  the  Wise" 
Lessing  raised  his  life  and  his  views 
into  the  standard  for  all  Jews. 

Mendelssohn  began  to  acquire  fluen- 
cy and  grace,  and  with  these  came 
fame,  as  a  German  writer  when  with 
Nicola i  at  Leipzig  (1757)  he  published 
the  "Library  of  the  Fine  Arts  and  the 
Liberal  Sciences."  His  style  as  a  writ- 
er was  above  criticism  and  although 
this  is  not  the  place  to  discuss  his  work 
as  a  philosopher  and  religious  reformer, 
his  "Phaedon.  or  the  Immortality  of 
the  Soul,"  and  "Jerusalem,  or  the 


Power  of  Religion  and  Judaism,"  by 
their  literary  excellence,  put  his  co- 
religionists, almost  at  one  stroke,  ID 
complete  touch  with  German  culture. 
For  with  them  his  influence  was  bound 
less,  and  to  the  German  men  of  letters 
he  represented  the  Jews  as  a  whole. 
So,  when  the  poet  Gleim  wrote  to  the 
Swiss  writer,  Johanu  Peter  Uz,  that  he 
derived  much  instruction  and  pleasure 
from  reading  Mendelssohn's  essays, 
and  when  Lessing  mentioned  Mendels- 
sohn as  his  friend  by  way  of  contrast 
to  pastor  Goeze,  his  arch  enemy,  it  was 
as  if  the  Jews  of  Germany,  from  be- 
ing hated  and  despised,  had  come  to 
take  their  due  part  in  the  intellectual 
life  of  the  nation. 

Of  the  Jewish  contemporaries  of 
Mendelssohn,  two  minor  poets  may  be 
mentioned.  Issachar  Falkensohu  Behr, 
a  native  of  Courland,  in  Russia,  wrote 
"Poems  by  a  Polish  Jew"  (1772),  which 
Goethe  reviewed  in  the  Frankfort 
Scientific  Review  for  that  year.  Even 
for  a  Jew,  Behr  had  a  remarkably 
subjective  temperament;  he  felt  it 
keenly  that  the  Jews  were  scarcely 
tolerated  by  the  Germans,  and  that 
they  had  no  legal  rights  or  social  posi- 
tion. Hence  his  poems  express  the 
woe  of  a  sensitive  Jewish  soul.  Goethe 
in  his  critical  notice  of  the  book  spoke 
favorably  of  Behr's  rhyming  powers. 
but  commented  adversely  on  the  use  of 
"Jew"  in  the  title.  It  tended  to  em- 
phasize a  religious  distinction  between 
this  poet  and  his  fellows  which  spirit- 
ually did  not  exist. 

Ephraim  Moses  Kuh's  "Epigrams,'' 
of  slight  worth  as  poetry,  were  pre- 
served with  their  author  for  posterity 
in  Berthold  Auerbach's  "Poet  and  Mer- 
chant" (1840),  a  tale  of  Jewish  life  in 
the  time  of  Moses  Mendelssohn,  which 
shows  us  the  gulf  separating  Judaism 
from  Chritianity. 

V. 

Moses  Mendelssohn,  while  both  a 
German  and  a  Jew,  never  failed  to 
keep  his  Jewish  obligations.  He  lived 
and  died  as  a  Jew.  But  his  descend- 
ants, even  his  own  children  after  his 
death,  forsook  the  faith  of  their  fath- 
ers. 

At  the  commencement  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  many  "enlightened" 
Jewesses  had  literary  aspirations.  Dor- 
othea, the  daughter  of  Mendelssohn, 
married  Friedrich  Schlegel,  the  writer, 
and  Rahel  Levin,  wife  of  Varnhagen 
von  Ense,  founded  a  "salon,"  the  meet- 
ing place  of  those  who  sought  fame 
in  art  or  literature.  Their  literary  pro- 
ductions were  of  very  slight  value,  and 
consisted  of  subjective  poems,  impres- 
sionistic novels,  morbid  romances 
where  no  attempt  at  the  delineation  or 
the  psychological  analysis  of  charac- 
ters was  made,  and  incoherent  auto- 
biographies where  Goethe's  "Truth  and 
Fiction"  and  "Werther"  were  followed. 

Though  these  women  of  letters  were 
a  force  for  evil  in  Judaism,  yet  they 


profoundly  influenced  the  young  Ger- 
man Jewish  writers.  Henriette  Herz 
encouraged  Ludwig  Boerne  to  discuss 
the  political,  sociological  and  economic 
problems  of  the  Jews  of  his  native 
Frankt'ort-on-the-Main  in  a  series  of 
brilliant  essays.  Heine's  "Rabbi  of 
Bacharach"  was  the  immediate  out- 
come of  his  activity  as  a  director  of  the 
Society  for  the  Science  of  Judaism  in 
Berlin,  when  he  was  the  devoted  dis- 
ciple of  Rahel  Levin.  Her  influence, 
moreover,  stimulated  him  to  write  his 
closet  play,  "Almansor."  Sessa's  "Our 
Trade"  is  an  anti-Jewish  dramatic 
piece  of  the  day.  The  customs  of  the 
Jews  and  their  assimilativeness  are 
held  up  to  ridicule,  and  the  names  of 
the  characters  in  the  play  describe 
Jewish  foibles.  Thus,  Simon  Ox  is  a 
cattle  dealer;  Isidorus  Oriental,  a  stu- 
dent, and  Loebl  Pennygrabber,  a  col- 
lector. 

At  the  end  of  the  first  quarter  of  the 
nineteenth  century  the  intellectual  ele- 
ment among  the  German  Jews  had 
come  quite  fully  under  the  influence  of 
the  notions  first  advanced  by  Mendels- 
sohn's over-zealous  followers.  They 
were  primarily  Germans,  and  Jews 
only  in  a  secondary  sense.  In  the  field 
of  letters,  too,  these  ideas  found  wide 
acceptance.  Jewish  writers  aimed  to 
be  Germans  in  their  thought  and  rarely 
wrote  on  topics  of  a  Jewish  nature. 
Karl  Spiudler's  "The  Jew"  (1827),  an 
historical  novel  of  the  Council  of  Con- 
stance, held  in  the  first  half  of  the  fif- 
teenth century,  is  one  of  a  few  excep- 
tions which  enforce  the  validity  of  this 
rule.  Of  course,  only  a  small  number 
of  Jews  wrote  literary  German,  and 
then,  as  in  Heine's  "Book  of  Songs." 
gave  no  prominence  to  the  Jews  or 
their  religion  in  their  books. 

VI. 

We  find  that  nearly  all  that  is  Jew- 
ish in  the  German  literature  of  the 
early  nineteenth  century  is  contained 
in  the  writings  and  personalities  of 
Heinrich  Heine  and  Ludwig  Boerne. 
They  regarded  German  culture  in  much 
the  same  spirit  as  the  knight  in  the 
days  of  chivalry  looked  upon  his  lady 
love — the  blessed  vision  hallowing  and 
protecting  his  adventurous  soul— for 
whom  he  died  willingly.  Heine  and 
Boerne  had  slight  sympathy  with  the 
German  Jews,  however,  and  their  dis- 
paraging criticism  is  reflected  in  the 
anti-Jewish  leanings  of  "Suess  the 
Jew,"  a  tale  by  Wilhelm  Hauff,  and 
in  the  works  of  other  writers.  Hauff's 
prejudiced  account  of  the  Jews  of  Born- 
heim,  near  Frankfort,  whom  he  da- 
scribed  as  avaricious,  ignorant  and 
fond  of  display,  is  directly  traceable  to 
Boerne's  influence. 

At  first  Heine  and  Boerne,  the  second 
of  whom  excelled  mostly  in  polemical 
discussions,  were  looked  upon  with  se- 
vere displeasure  by  German  writers, 
and  this  because  of  their  Jewish  ori- 
gin. Karl  Gutzkow  was  the  first  Chris- 


turn  author  to  undertake  their  defense. 
A  student  of  their  writings,  the  author 
of  "Uriel  Acosta,"  the  Jewish  drama 
of  German  literature,  acquired  habits 
of  toleration  for  them. 

Yet  around  Heine  and  his  works  a 
storm  of  controversy  has  continually 
raged.  Adolf  Bartels  convicts  him  to 
his  own  satisfaction  of  every  crime  a 
man  of  letters  can  commit;  Wiesinger, 
a  recent  critic,  is  fairer  to  his  memory, 
but  finds  Heine  lacking  the  ideal  in- 
spiration of  a  Messianic  leader  like 
Theodor  Herzl.  He  regards  Heine, 
however,  as  the  creator  of  the  Ghetto 
novel  in  German  fiction. 

Boerne  did  not  possess  Heine's  pow- 
ers of  imagination,  poetic  description 
and  stinging  satire.  The  wounds  which 
he  inflicted  have  hence  had  time  to  heal 
completely. 

As  a  German  author  Heine  was 
neither  philo-Jewish  nor  anti-Jewish  in 
his  sentiments.  He  did  not  concern 
himself  with  speculations  on  the  future 
of  the  Jews;  he  considered  the  Jewish 
people  to  be  simply  a  factor— an  im- 
portant one,  it  is  true— in  human  de- 
velopment. Georg  Brandos  says  oi' 
him:  "In  Germany  he  is  looked  on 
and  judged  as  the  stinging  nettle  in  the 
garden  of  literature;  he  stings  the  his- 
torians' fingers  and  they  curse  him." 

Heine  was  profoundly  influenced  by 
his  mother.  Although  brought  up  in 
an  observing  Jewish  home,  he  did  not 
feel  himself  bound  by  any  exacting  cer- 
emonial system,  and  looked  with  equal 
interest  and  satisfaction  on  his  Jewish 
and  his  Christian  environment.  In 
common  with  many  German  Jews,  he 
was  an  ardent  admirer  of  Napoleon. 
the  great  leveler  of  class  distinctions; 
his  friends  and  teachers  were  all  men 
of  a  different  faith  from  his  own.  He 
achieved  finally  so  great  a  degree  of 
objectivity  that  he  declared  proudly: 
"I  am  a  Jew;  I  am  a  Christian!" 

Heine  was  extremely  cynical.  The 
battle  of  his  life  was  long-drawn  and 
severe,  and  for  eight  weary  years  he 
was  buried  in  a  mattress-grave.  He 
was  vacillating  in  his  point  of  view, 
and  never  accorded  consistent  treat- 
ment to  any  subject  which  he  touched 
on  often  in  his  writings.  From  his 
perverse  love  of  contrariety  for  its  own 
sake  he  was  one  day  a  Jew,  the  next  a 
Hellene,  now  a  German,  and  again  an 
enemy  of  the  Fatherland.  To  Boerne 
Judaism  was  one  of  many  religions  of 
equal  worth:  the  Jews  were  "that  bit 
of  the  Occident  transplanted  to  the 
Orient."  In  the  end  he  became  thor- 
oughly identified  with  the  German  pa- 
triotic cause. 

VII. 

The  Ghetto  novelists,  who  took,  the 
lead  among  German  Jewish  authors 
toward  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  did  not  share  Heine's  and 
Boerne's  views  of  Judaism  and  the 
Jews.  They  decided  to  be  both  Jews 
and  Germans,  liberal  in  their  political 
notions,  yet  not  favorably  inclined  to 


Socialistic  propaganda.  Their  views 
and  thoughts  were,  in  short,  those  of 
the  average  German  of  the  time,  al- 
though their  Jewish  affiliations  were 
.strong  and  sincere.  After  the  revo- 
lutions of  March,  1848,  which  opened 
the  door  of  religious,  political,  and, 
for  a  time  at  least,  social  equality  to 
Jews  in  the  countries  of  Europe,  the 
German  Jews  were  able  to  take  up 
the  active  work  of  spreading  German 
culture  and  ideals,  and  wholly  to  do 
away  with  the  distinctions  existing 
between  them  and  the  Germans. 

To  achieve  this,  result  in  part  the 
Ghetto  novels  were  written.  Their 
readers  saw  that  much  of  the  humor 
and  the  pathos  of  life  were  pros-jut 
in  the  isolated  world  of  the  Ghetto, 
and  that,  after  all,  the  dwellers  in  the 
Jewish  quarter  of  the  towns  and  vil- 
lages were  like  other  men,  possess- 
ing the  same  virtues  and  evincing  the 
same  faults  as  the  Christians.  Thus, 
Leopold  Kompert,  Moritz  Hartmann, 
Ludwig  August  Frankl  and  the  au- 
thors of  "Sippurim"  wrote  of  the  Bo- 
hemian Ghetto,  Salomon  Kohn,  B. 
Auerbach,  Em.  Emil  and  Michael 
Klapp  of  that  of  Prague;  Hieronymus 
Lorin,  Eduard  Kulke,  Emauuel  Bondi 
and  J.  S.  Tauber  told  the  story  of  the 
Jews  of  Moravia,  and  Karl  Isidor 
Beck  and  S.  P.  Rosner  were  the  poets 
of  Hungarian  Jewry.  Karl  Emil 
Franzos,  Nathan  Samuely  and  Leopold 
von  Sacher-Masoch,  a  Christian,  wrote 
of  "Half-Asia,"  the  Ghettoes  of  Ga- 
licia,  while  Leo  Herzberg-Fraenkel 
and  the  Gentile  Eliza  P.  Orzeszko 
described  the  Jews  of  Poland.  J. 
Herzberg  and  Aron  David  Bernstein 
wrote  some  interesting  tales  (the  lat- 
ter's  "Voegele  the  Maggid"  is  to  be 
particularly  noted)  of  Posen,  and 
David  Houigmann  ("Berel  Grenadier," 
a  tale  of  the  seven  years'  war  of 
Frederick  the  Great),  and  Ulrich 
Frank  (Ulla  Wolff)  of  Silesia.  Be- 
sides Heine  and  Boerne,  whose  "Novel" 
is  a  tale  of  the  Jew's  love  of  the 
Christian  maiden,  only  B.  Hause,  Sal- 
omon Hermann  Mosenthal  and  the 
Christian  authors.  Annette  von  Droste- 
Huelshoff  ("The  Jewish  Beech,"  a  tale 
of  the  Westphaliau  Ghetto),  and  Wil- 
heliii  Jensen  ("The  Jews  of  Cologne," 
an  historical  romance  of  the  massa- 
cres of  1096),  wrote  of  the  Jews  of 
modern  Germany.  But  all  of  these 
writers  were  Germans  in  their  ideals 
and  outlook  on  life. 

The  first  Ghetto  novel  in  point  of 
time  was  Heinrich  Heine's  "The  Rabbi 
of  Bacharach."  Here  we  are  present- 
ed with  an  intimate,  yet  inimitable 
picture  of  mediaeval  German  Jewish 
life.  The  scenes  at  the  ancient  Pass- 
over table  are  described  so  faithfully 
that  this  portion  of  the  book  is  ex- 
tremely valuable  for  the  study  of  the 
religious  customs  of  the  Jews.  Heine 
pictured  the  constant  oppression  of  the 
Jews  by  the  Christians,  of  whom  they 
stood  in  fear;  their  half-ludicrous,  half- 


pathetic  terror  of  the  savage  soldiery 
is  carefully  set  forth. 

The  book  consists  of  three  chapters, 
the  first  and  second  written  in  1821 
and  1825,  the  last  in  1839.  It  is  my. 
belief  that  Heine  consciously  gave  the 
story  this  fragmentary  character,  for 
he  had.  in  the  first  place,  said  all  that 
he  could  .say  on  the  subject,  and  sec- 
ondly, as  a  novel  the  book  lacked 
dramatic  action. 

Berthold  Auerbach.  under  the  in- 
fluence of  Bitzius,  first  made  the  Ger- 
man village  tale  a  notably  successful 
form  of  literary,  endeavor.  His 
"Black  Forest  Village  Stories"  (1843 
and  subsequently)  combines  poetry 
Avith  prosaic  details  of  real  life.  Auer- 
bach shows  us  the  true  conditions  in 
the  peasant  life  of  the  South  German 
Black  Forest.  Here,  and  in  "On  the 
Heights"  he  opposes  to  the  unnatural 
and  artificial  in  both  Church  and 
State  the  simple  Christian  life  of  the 
quiet  country  side,  so  complete  was 
his  assimilation  with  German  culture 
and  patriotic  ideals.  At  the  outset  of 
his  literary  career  Auerbach  wrote  a 
review  entitled  "Judaism  and  the 
Newest  Literature."  His  novel  "Spi- 
noza," a  romance  woven  about  the 
lire  of  the  great  Dutch  Jew,  although 
valuable  as  a  study  in  psychological 
analysis,  dealt  too  much  with  the 
conflict  between  reason  and  super- 
stition. The  story  contains  a  love- 
episode,  but  Spinoza's  long  speeches, 
in  which  he  sets  forth  the  principles 
of  his  system  of  philosophy,  are  very 
discursive  and  excessively  unromantic. 
Toward  the  close  of  his  life,  and  until 
the  attacks  of  the  anti-Semites  put  an 
end  to  his  remarkable  literary  pro- 
ductivity, Auerbach  worked  on  a  Jew- 
ish novel,  to  be  called  "Ben  Ziou," 
which  was  to  indicate  the  identity  of 
purpose  and  the  common  origin  of 
both  the  Jewish  and  the  German  cul- 
ture. His  self-imposed  task  still  re- 
mains to  be  done! 

•aalomon  Hermann  Mosenthal's  Ghet- 
to novels  are  brief,  but  well  written, 
full  of  the  quaint  and  charming  de- 
tails of  South  German  Jewish  life, 
seventy-five  years  ago,  and  deftly 
mingling  humor  and  pathos.  We  shall 
summarize  in  part  the  stories  which 
make  up  his  "Tales  of  Jewish  Family 
Life,"  for  they  are  typical  products  of 
the  pens  of  the  Ghetto  novelists.  Yet, 
Mosenthal  had  nothing  of  the  bitter- 
ness of  Franzos;  he  did  not  offer  so- 
ciological studies  to  his  readers  like 
Herzberg-Frat'iikel,  or  propound  prob- 
lems in  Jewish  education  like  Koin- 
pert. 

In  "Aunt  Guttraud"  he  tells  the 
story  of  a  poor  woman,  one  of  the 
silent  martyrs  of  private  life.  Her 
marriage  to  a  besotted  Alsatian  Jew, 
in  the  days  of  King  Jerome  Bonaparte, 
I> roved  disastrous.  Not  only  iid  her 
husband  make  life  a  burden  to  her, 
but  he  lost  his  business  and  her  mon- 
ey, and  finally  became  the  loader  of  a 


gang  of  smugglers.  On  his  capture 
and  sentence  to  the  pillory  his  Jewish 
fellow-townsmen  feared  that  his  dis- 
grace would  seriously  endanger  their 
position  in  the  little  community  on 
the  river  Fulda. 

When  the  husband  was  strapped  in 
the  pillory,  Aunt  Guttraud,  for  the 
title  of  the  story  is  derived  from  the 
name  of  the  heroine,  stood  by  his  side, 
deliberately  exposing  herself  to  the  in- 
sults of  the  mob.  But  it  kept  silence, 
recognizing  in  her  presence  that  the 
despised  Jews  possessed  more  than 
their  share  of  the  elementary  domestic 
virtues.  The  priest  passing  before  her 
doffed  his  hat  to  her — she  represented 
the  supreme  sufferer  of  his  own  faith. 
Ever  her  husband's  willing  slave  she 
was  true  to  him  in  the  long  years  of 
his  imprisonment,  and  tenderly  nursed 
the  incurable  invalid  when  he  return- 
ed home  to  die.  "Raaf's  Mine"  is  the 
sad  story  of  the  self-sacrificing  Mine, 
who  grew  old  in  caring  for  others' 
children.  The  brilliant  daughter  of  a 
famous  and  learned  rabbi  (Raaf),  she 
never  married,  but  became  the  mother 
of  all  the  orphans  in  the  little  Hessian 
community.  Mosenthal  rose  to  his 
highest  flights  of  fancy  and  genius  in 
this  touching  study  of  an  idealized 
altruism. 

Mosenthal  embodied  many  of  the 
reminiscences  of  his  own  youth  in  the 
tale  ot  the  maiden  who  agreed  to  mar- 
ry her  aged  suitor,  simply  because  her 
father  willed  it.  And  he  was  always 
at  particular  pains  to  emphasize  the 
Jew's  high  sense  of  duty  and  filial 
respect. 

Hermann  Schiff,  in  his  stories  of 
North  German  Jewish  life,  and  Rom- 
peri  gave  us  splendid  pictures  of  tho 
Jewish  mother,  the  faithful  house-wife 
of  the  Ghetto.  Wilhelm  Herzberg's 
"Jewisn  Family  Papers"  was  trans- 
lated into  English  by  the  Rev.  F.  de 
Sola  Mcndes.  and  Hieronymus  Lorm's 
rather  fanciful  "Gabriel  Solmar,"  the 
story  of  the  lad  who  gained  his  heart's 
case  only  within  Ghetto  walls,  mini- 
mized the  influence  of  the  Christian 
enlightenment.  The  rabbi  novelists. 
Markus  Lehmann  and  Ludwig  Philipp- 
son,  wrote  on  Jewish  historical 
themes,  but  none  of  their  works  rises 
above  patient,  plodding  mediocrity, 
rhilippson's  collection  "Saron"  and 
his  "Sepphoris  and  Rome."  a  tale  of 
the  Christian  emperors  of  Rome  in  the 
fourth  century  of  the  present  era,  de- 
serve individual  mention. 

Now  and  then  quaint  bits  of  humor 
and  Judaeo-German  Expressions  nr-i 
found  in  the  pages  of  the  Ghetto  novel. 
Unintelligible  to  the  Christian,  they  un- 
lock a  hidden  door  to  old-world  tradi- 
tions, delightful  reminiscences,  and 
comforting  delights  to  the  Jew.  A  run 
David  Bernstein,  whose  tales  of  I'oseii 
point  the  same  moral  as  Mosenthal's, 
has  preserved  in  "Mendel  Gibbor"  a 
splendid  example  of  the  humorous  pos- 
sibilities of  Talmud ic  dialectics. 


"We  pious  children  of  the  K'hille," 
cried  Reb  Abbelo.  his  whole  body 
swaying  all  the  time,  "cannot  break 
stones  on  the  highway!  Why? — Be- 
cause the  Midrash  tells  us  when  Ja- 
cob our  ancestor  .-journeyed  from  Beer- 
seba  to  Haran,  he  struck  Beth-el  at 
nightfall  au/1  lay  down  to  sleep  on  a 
number  of  stones.  But  the  stones  be- 
gan to  quarrel  for  the  honor  of  being 
the  resting-place"  of  his  pious  head. 
So  the  Holy  One,  blessed  be  He, 
formed  all  the  little  stones  into  a  big 
pillow,  and  this  our  ancestor  used  as 
an  altar  the  following  morning. — Now. 
if  our  pious  children  of  the  K'hille 
would  break  stones  on  the  highway, 
and  one  of  them  grown  weary  lies 
down  to  rest,  a  miracle  like  that  which 
befell  our  ancestor  may  occur:  all  of 
the  broken  stones  will  re-unite  and 
the  highway  never  get  done." 

Mosenthal.  too.  criticized  th«  re- 
form movement  in  Judaism  in  this 
comment  on  a  new  rabbi: 

"It  is  surprising  that  so  old  a 
K'hille  as  Frankfort  listens  to  the  new- 
fangled Schmus:  a  loafer  darsheuing 
in  High  German.  "Tis  a  Charbe  and 
Bushe  for  a  Jewish  K'hille.'' 

In  the  newest  works  of  the  Ghetto 
novelists  a  phychological  element  has 
been  added.  The  dominant  note  of 
ririeh  Frank's  "Simon  Eichelkatz  and 
Other  Tales''  may  be  discerned  in  the 
sentence:  "There  is  neither  good  nor 
bad  in  us:  the  moral  value  of  tlfings  is 
determined  by  our  deeds."  On  the 
one  hand  we  have  the  unquestioning 
faith  of  the  old,  orthodox  Jew,  on  the 
other  the  son's  enthusiasm  for  Nietz- 
sche's system  and  all  that  is  liberal 
and  modern.  Arthur  Kalm's  "Fading 
Forms"  strikes  the  same  note.  There 
we  have  the  same  conflict  between  the 
Talmud  and  the  modern  Jew.  The 
latter  is  not  only  indifferent  to  all  re- 
ligious appeal,  but  strongly  material  in 
his  inclinations,  for  he  discovers  that 
in  leaving  his  faith  he  may  vastly  im- 
prove his  social  position. 

In  Kahn's  tale.  "Jachet  the  Peni- 
tent," Jachet  is  the  daughter  of  a  pious 
Jew  who  brought  her  up  in  accord- 
ance with  orthodox  tradition.  On  a 
visit  to  "emancipated"  relatives  in 
Mayence.  where  the  Talmud  and  its 
laws  are  never  mentioned,  she  suc- 
cumbs to  an  attractive  Austrian  of- 
ficer. Their  marryige  is  out  of  the 
question,  and  Jachet  refuses  baptism, 
as  this  would  imply  an  absolute  break 
with  the  past  on  her  part.  According- 
ly she  returns  home,  is  repulsed  by 
her  father,  and  spends  the  remainder 
of  her  life  as  a  penitent!^  visitor  to 
the  dead.  "His  Wedding  Song"  pre- 
sents similar  features.  The  Jewish 
cantor's  son.  a  genius  on  the  violin, 
cannot  marry  the  girl  he  loves  because 
he  is  a  Jew  of  the  Ghetto,  and  she  a 
Christian  maiden  of  an  ancient  line. 
He  remains  true  to  his  faith — an  in- 
mate of  an  insane  asylum. 

The    Ghetto   novelists    in    one    word 


were  creators.  They  excelled  in  de- 
picting the  gorgeous  historic  past  of 
their  race.  Thus,  Salomon  Kolm's  "A 
German  Minister  of  State"  is  an  ac- 
curate, carefully-drawn,  yet  interest- 
ing portrait  of  Joseph  Suess  Oppen- 
heimer,  the  celebrated  finance  minis- 
ter of  the  dukes  of  Wurternberg,  su- 
perior in  every  respect  to  Hauff's 
treatment  of  the  same  subject.  These 
writers  laid  bare  the  misery  and 
tragedy  of  Ghetto  life,  and  sought  to 
implant  In  Jewish  minds  the  lesson 
that  the  spirit  of  the  law  is  infinitely 
to  be  preferred  above  its  letter.  In 
striking  sentences  they  suggested  to 
the  Jews  the  applicability  of  the  Tal- 
mudic  phrase  to  modern  conditions: 
"Be  Jews  at  heart,  but  in  the  world 
take  up  your  share  of  the  general  bur- 
den of  culture  and  human  advance- 
ment." When  all  the  Ghettoes  will 
have  passed  away — and  it  is  incum- 
bent upon  us  to  hope  that  the  time  for 
this  is  not  far  distant — the  writings  of 
these  Ghetto  novelists  will  be  read 
with  renewed  interest;  they  hold  the 
mirror  up  to  a  self-centered,  half-bar- 
barous world,  one,  however,  peopled 
with  those  who  drank  the  cup  of  the 
bitterness  of  life  to  its  dregs,  who  were 
for  all  that  a  race  of  men.* 

VIII. 

Heine  is  the  greatest  German  lyric 
poet  after  Goethe,  and  the  first  name 
among  the  Jewish  men'  of  letters  in 
Germany.  Yet.  few  of  his  poems — ad- 
mirably translated  by  the  gifted  Em- 
ma Lazarus,  an  American  Jewess — 
have  an  absorbing  Jewish  interest,  and 
of  these  unquestionably  the  best  are 
the  three  called  "Hebrew  Melodies," 
in  his  "Rornancero." 

These  poems  were  written,  it  is  safe 
to  say.  to  illustrate  a  notion  that  had 
possessed  itself  of  their  author's  mind 
and  longed  for  free  expression:  Heine 
felt  subconsciously  that  the  Jews  are 
human  beings,  neither  more  nor  less. 
George  Eliot,  it  need  not  surprise  us. 
had  the  same  thought,  and  she  has 
said  in  a  letter  to  a  regular  corres- 
pondent: "If  art  does  not  enlarge 
men's  sympathies,  it  does  nothing 
morally.  .  .  .  The  only  effect  I 
ardently  long  to  produce  by  my  writ- 
ings is  that  those  who  read  them 
should  be  better  able  to  imagine  and 
to  feel  the  pains  and  the  joys  of  those 
who  differ  from  themselves  in  every- 


*Tne    following    is    a    list    of    some    English 
translations   of  German  Ghetto  novels: 
Auerbaeh.    BerthoW : 

"Poet   and   Merchant."     Maemillan. 
Franzos,    Karl    Ernil: 

"For  the  Right."   Harper.   Contains  a  pre- 
face   by    George    Maedonald,    LL.D. 
"Judith  Trachtenberg."     Harper. 
"The   Jews  of   Barnow."      Black  wood.     Out 

of  print. 
Kompert.    Leopold : 

"Christian     and    Leah    and    Other    Ghetto 

Stories."      Macuiillan. 
"Scenes   from  the   Ghetto."     Remington. 
Knlko.    Kdunrd: 

••Pitsche-Phtsche.     or    the     Life     Story     of 

Froimel."      Bloeh. 
Sacher-Masoch.    Leopold   von: 
"Jewish    Talcs."      MoClurg. 


thing  but  the  broad  fact  of  being  strug- 
gling, erring  human  creatures." 

"Princess  Sabbath,"  the  first  of 
these  poems,  shows  that  throughout 
the  centuries,  in  spite  of  innumerable 
persecutions,  the  Jews  have  remained 
strong  and  firm  in  their  ancestral 
faith,  for  the  "sweet  Sabbath  rest" 
has  ever  turned  "the  Jewish  dog"  into 
a  prince  among  men.  "Jehuda  ben 
Halevy"  is  a  splendid  appreciation  of 
Jehudah  Halevi,  the  sweet  singer  of 
Israel;  in  "Disputation"  Heine  has  de- 
scribed a  theological  debate  between 
the  rabbis  and  the  priests  of  the  Mid- 
dle Ages. 

His  early  poem,  "Belsazer,"  mirrors 
the  idea  expressed  in  the  Bible  by  the 
verse,  "And  it  came  to  pass  at  mid- 
night." "Edom"  and  "With  a  Copy  of 
the  'Rabbi  of  Bacharach' "  are  the 
fruits  of  his  youthful  studies  in  Jew- 
ish history.  Heine's  references  to 
Moses  Mendelssohn  in  "Germany, 
a  Winter's  Tale"  are  bitingly  satirical, 
but  this  Bitterness  is  due  to  the  poet's 
intense  hatred  of  the  Fatherland  and 
of  everything  German  during  his 
Parisian  exile.  He  considered  Men- 
delssohn, who  typified  German  Jewry, 
an  integral,  indeed  a  necessary  part 
of  German  culture. 

The  lesser  poets,  Theodor  Creizenach. 
Karl  Isidor  Beck,  Leopold  Stein  and 
Ludwig  Wihl  were  servile  imitators  of 
Heine.  Beck,  indeed,  aimed  to  follow 
Boerne  as  a  man  of  letters,  and  evinced 
a  love  of  democratic,  even  radical  no- 
tions. Ludwig  August  Frankl  was 
the  author  of  weak  poems,  based  in 
part  on  Heine's  "The  North  Sea,"  and 
Moritz  Hartman,  author  of  the  other- 
wise highly  original  "Rhymed  Chron- 
icle of  the  Pastor  Mauritius,"  and 
Moriz  Rappaport  followed  somewhat 
closely  the  models  of  Heine. 

In  1849  a  fanciful  Jewish  poem  in 
eleven  songs,  "Assaf  and  Tirza,"  by  J. 
Schwarz,  was  published  at  Heidelberg. 
Its  verses  are  stilted  and  often  com- 
monplace, but  the  moral  tone  of  the 
piece  resides  in  its  broad  applications 
of  the  virtue  of  the  fifth  commandment 
to  Jewish  life.  Assaf  and  Tirza  were 
betrothed  in  Spain,  just  before  the 
expulsion  of  the  Jews  from  that  king- 
dom. Condemned  to  denth  by  the 
Inquisition,  Assaf  accepted  Chris- 
tianity, thus  almost  breaking  the  heart 
of  Tirza,  his  beloved.  She  refused  to 
join  Assaf  in  his  new  faith,  and  with 
her  family  emigrated  to  the  Holy  Land. 
Assaf,  too,  the  leader  of  a  popular  re- 
volt, came  to  Palestine  with  his  aged 
father,  returned  to  Judaism,  and  was 
reunited  with  Tirza;  the  lovers  found 
each  other  at  prayer  before  the  tomb 
of  Rachel  in  Bethlehem.  The  poem 
concludes  with  a  vision  of  the  mil- 
lennium when  Judaism  shall  triumph. 

Some  of  the  minor  writers  wrote 
inspiring  poems  on  Jewish  themes. 
They  sought  to  bring  about  an  up- 
lifting of  the  Jews — spiritually,  intel- 
lectually, morally,  to  secure  a  full  ap- 


preciation of  life's  ideals,  of  German 
and  Jewish  culture  among  them. 
Thus,  Beck,  although  in  private  he  had 
turned  Protestant,  appealed  in  his 
poetry  to  the  Jew's  love  of  Zion — in 
"New  Palestine"  he  besought  him  to 
return  to  the  land  of  his  ancient  glory. 

"Land  of  wonders!     Land  of  dreams! 
I  greet  thee;  hear  my  song! 
Thy  mighty  cedars  stand. 
The    sea    doth    beat    against    thy    shore. 
But   thy  heroes  are  no  more, 
And  thy  prophets  speak  no  grace; 
E'en  the  last   song  of  the  harpists, 
Faded,  vanished,  has  flown  away. 

"Land!     Thou  holiest  of  all, 
Thou,    the    lovely   bride   of   heaven, 
Thou   art    fallen   in  the   dust 
And  thy  people  wail  aloud. 
Torn   apart  now  are  their   garments, 
Dust  and  ashes  their  sole  crown; 
And  the  earth  is  their  hard  pillow 
As  they  weep — and  still  have  faith. 

"Will  a  saviour  lead  the  Jews? 
Will  he  break  their  bonds  and  chains? 
There  are  millions  who  believe 
That  he  was,  and  lived  on  earth. 
Should  he  come  now — let  him  sever 
Heavy,   odious  gives  of  woe; 
Should  he  come  now — let  him  lead  us, 
Lead  us  to  the  Promised  Land." 

In  "The  Jewish  Peddler"  he  told  the 
story  of  the  base  and  humiliating  re- 
pression of  the  Jew  of  1830.  Ludwig 
Wihl,  whose  poetry  was  strongly  so- 
cialistic in  tendency,  preached  to  Jews 
the  doctrine  of  the  simple  life.  Theo- 
dor Creizenach  wrote  "The  Jewish  Im- 
migrants in  America."  and  declared 
that,  when  the  Jewish  State  fell,  the 
task  of  the  Jews  in  this  world  was  ac- 
complished; now  they  had  no  need 
to  preserve  their  separate,  racial 
identity,  and  should  become  Germans 
for  an  purposes.  Moseuthal  in  "De- 
borah" spoke  of  the  new  home  and 
glorious  future  the  Jews  would  surely 
find  in  America.  But,  as  is  usually 
the  case  with  Jewish  writers,  many 
of  the  poets  were  savage  pessimists. 
and  beheld  in  the  sad  state  of  the  Jew 
only  the  impending  dissolution  of  mod- 
ern civilization:  Joel  Jacoby,  before 
his  conversion  to  Catholicism  and  un- 
der such  an  influence,  wrote  his  morbid 
"The  Sorrows  of  a  Jew,"  in  which  God 
was  looked  upon  as  a  paternalistic 
ruler,  who  intervened  directly  to 
guide  his  creatures. 

In  an  epic  poem,  "Jerusalem"  (1858), 
Adolf  Stern  dealt  with  the  fall  of  Ziou 
in  70,  a  favorite  subject  with  many  a 
Jewish  poet  and  novelist.  Mirra,  the 
Jewess,  the  heroine,  was  finally  res- 
cued from  the  victorious  Roman  legion- 
aries  by  Philippus,  the  Christian,  her 
lover.  In  gratitude  to  him  she  adopt- 
ed his  religion.  The  story  of  Beru- 
riah,  the  faithful  spouse  of  Rabbi  Meir. 
and  that  of  the  wonder  rabbi  of 
Prague  are  told  in  fascinating.  y<-t 
si ni] ile  rhymes  by  Abraham  M.  Tend- 
lau  in  his  "Jewish  Legends  of  Olden 
Times"  (1842,  again  in  1ST:1.).  Ludwig 


Philippson's  poems  are  la]>ored,  arti- 
ficial and  wholly  lacking  in  spontane- 
ity. "The  Ego,"  a  didactic  poem,  is  in 
reality  a  study  in  verse  of  Jewish 
psychology,  and  thus  something  of  a 
literary  curiosity. 

Ludwig  August  Frankl's  descriptive 
verse  was  uniformly  excellent,  and  his 
historical  poems  by  the  accuracy  of 
their  scenes  compensated  the  reader 
for  their  lack  of  original  ideas. 
"Rachel"  and  "Moses"  are  series  of 
short,  beautiful,  spiritualized  pieces. 
The  best  of  all  his  poems  is  "The 
Prirnator,"  an  epic  of  the  Jews  of 
Prague,  which  passed  through  five  edi- 
tions in  18G1  and  1862.  The  descrip- 
tions which  Frankl  gives  of  the  drunk- 
en mob  at  the  royal  castle  forcing  th? 
Primator,  the  leader  of  the  Jews,  In 
accept  baptism  so  that  he  may  be 
crowned  King  of  Bohemia,  of  the 
father  who  then  accused  his  wayward 
son  of  having  offended  against  tne 
Jewish  law  and  how  that  father 
was  consumed  by  remorse  for 
his  son's  death  are  all  excellent.  In 
the  "Epilogue,"  where  he  predicts  the 
early  approach  of  the  millennium,  when 
all  religious  distinctions  shall  disap- 
pear, Frankl  is  not  so  satisfactory. 

At  this  place  in  our  discussion  the 
German  translators  of  the  Spanish  He- 
brew poetry  of  the  Middle  Ages  de- 
serve to  be  briefly  considered.  While 
these  writers  were  scholars  above  all 
else,  their  versions  were  notable  alike 
as  poetry  and  as  faithful  and  accurate 
reproductions  of  the  sense  and  spirit 
of  the  originals.  Abraham  Geiger,  S. 
J.  Kaempf,  Seligmaun  Heller,  Abra- 
ham M.  Teudlau,  Leopold  Dukes. 
Moritz  Steinschneider,  M.  J.  Letteris, 
J.  Loweuberg.  A.  Sulzbach,  B.  Loew- 
enstein  and  Leopold  Zunz  kept  the 
names  of  Jehudah  Halevi.  Abraham 
ibn  Ezra,  Kalir,  Jehudah  ben  Salomo 
al-Charisi  and  Salomon  Gabirol  alive  in 
men's  minds  and  hearts.  The  genera- 
tions of  Jews  who  know  no  Hebrew 
have  come  to  cherish  these  poets  of 
gladsome  days  in  Spain  through  the 
efforts  of  these  translators.  To  give 
an  example,  Geiger  has  put  Jehudah 
Halevi's  thoughts  on  beholding  med- 
iaeval Egypt  into  these  words: 

''Wondrous  is  this  land  to  see, 
With  perfume  its  meadows  laden, 

But  more  fair  than  all  to  me 
Is  yon  slender,  gentle  maiden. 

All,  Time's  swift  flight  I  fain  would  stay, 

.F<>t  netting  that  my  locks  are  gray." 


Jews,  in  recent  times,  have  been 
successful  writers  of  German  farces 
and  comedies  which  have,  of  course, 
little  or  no  Jewish  interest.  In  plays 
with  scenes  drawn  from  the  historic 
Jewish  past,  or  founded  on  incidents 
narrated  in  the  Bible.  Christian 
dramatists  have  had  a  greater  meas- 
ure of  good  fortune.  The  times  of 
Herod  and  Hie  destruction  of  the 


Herodian  Temple  are  subjects  which 
possess  an  abiding  dramatic  appeal, 
yet  what  work  by  a  Jewish  writer 
can  oe  named  in  the  same  catalogue, 
even  with  Stephen  Phillips'  "Herod"? 
The  latter  is  weak  in  its.  action,  but 
strong  poetically,  and  Mr.  Phillips 
gives  evidence  of  flights  of  superior 
fancy  in  the  development  of  a  theme 
which  Jewish  authors  treat  didactical- 
ly. 

To  speak  more  generally,  no  Jewish 
dramatist  has  yet  arisen  to  take  his 
place  with  Lessing,  Grillparzer  and 
Klopstock.  Lessing's  "Nathan  the 
Wise"  and  "The  Jews"  are  classics  in 
the  world's  literature.  Grillparzer,  in 
"The  Jewess  of  Toledo,"  tells  in  high- 
ly poetic  language  the  story  'of  King 
Alfonso  of  Spain,  a  wise  monarch  and 
just  to  the  Jews  of  his  land,  whose 
jealous  queen  consummates  the  mur- 
der of  Rachel,  the  beautiful  Je\vc->. 
whom  Alfonso  had  seen  and  loved. 
Klopstock  in  "The  Death  of  Adam." 
in  "Solomon"  and  in  "David"  wrote 
interesting  poetry  around  the  lives  of 
some  of  the  heroes  of  the  Bible. 

Heine's  "Almansor"  and  Michael 
Beer's  "The  Pariah."  the  earliest 
dramas  of  some  importance  written  by 
Jews,  were  plays  for  the  closet,  not 
the  stage.  Their  characters  were  too 
strongly  idealized,  and  there  is  a 
flavor  of  unreality  in  speech  and  ac- 
tion. Moreover,  these  dramatists  did 
not  openly  address  themselves  to  the 
solution  of  the  Jewish  problem  of 
their  time,  but  simply  attempted  to 
show  how  the  Jews,  disguised  as 
Moors  or  Pariahs  for  theatrical  pur- 
poses, were  oppressed  by  the  enemies 
of  their  race,  figuring,  similarly  con- 
cealed, as  Christians  or  Hindoos.  The 
scene  of  Heine's  drama  is  set  among 
the  Moors  and  Christians  in  fifteenth- 
century  Spain.  Gadhi.  the  Pariah, 
whom  Beer  makes  the  vehicle  of  Jew- 
ish protest,  speaks  as  follows: 

" Could  I  but  be  a  man 

among  men! — Ah! 

I  want  so  little  here  below,  so  very  little! 
Men  lap  their  dogs,  caress  their  steeds, 
But  shun  our  sight,  as  if  Dame  Nature 
Had    masked    us    in    a    mocking    human 

shape. 
Make  me  your  equal;  see,  am  I  not  like 

you?' 

(With  increasing  fervor). 
1,    too,    have   a   country,   I   will  protect 

it " 

In  the  times  when  Karl  Gutzkow 
wrote  "Uriel  Acosta,"  Otto  Ludwig 
"The  Maccabees,"  and  Friedrich  Heb- 
bel  "Judith"  and  "Herod  and  Mariaru- 
ne,"  Mosenthal  pleaded  for  toleration 
of  the  Jew.  His  drama  "Deborah," 
known  favorably  in  England  and 
America  as  "Leah  the  Forsaken,"  was 
written  with  the  purpose  of  picturing 
the  treatment  and  condition  of  the 
Jews  in  Continental  Europe,  and  its 
lesson  is  that  the  brotherhood  of  man 
will  never  be  established  on  earth  if 


Jew  and  Christian  cannot  dwell  to- 
gether in  love  and  peace.  The  play 
embodies  a  strikingly  human  appeal 
in  spite  of  Grillparzer's  criticism  that 
the  heroine  should  have  been  a  real 
gypsy  vagabond  rather  than  a  Jewess. 
Kossarski's  "Titus"  is  a  long  drama 
dealing  with  the  destruction  of  the 
second  Temple.  Ludwig  Philippson 
wrote  a  number  of  labored  plays  on 
Jewish  historical  themes,  none  of 
which  has  any  particular  merit.  Per- 
haps "Esterka,"  the  tragedy  of  the 
simple  Jewess  who  became  queen  of 
Poland  in  the  days  of  King  Casimir 
the  Great  (1370),  is  the  best  of  all. 
Mention  may  be  made  here  of  the. 
novel  on  this  subject  by  Hugo  Freund 
which  achieved  a  fair  measure  of 
popularity. 

The  legend  of  the  Wandering  Jew 
has  been  extensively  utilized  in  Ger- 
man literature  by  Goethe  and  Lenau 
and  other  great  writers.  Julius  Mo<- 
en's  "Ahasuerus"  (1838),  and  Robert 
Hamerling's  "Ahasuerus  in  Rome'' 
(1866),  are  interesting  epic  poems  in 
this  field.  Of  course,  to  some  poets 
Ahasuerus  is  typical  of  Christianity; 
to  others  he  represents  the  Logos,  but 
to  Auerbach,  in  "Spinoza,"  Ahasuerus 
is  the  incarnation  of  the  widely-scat- 
tered, persecuted  Jewish  people.  All 
of  these  theories  are  considered  by 
Heller  in  "Ahasuerus:  an  Heroic 
Poem"  (1868). 

Finally,  it  may  be  said  that  the 
Jewish  dramatists — none  of  whom  has 
achieved  great  renown — lack  true 
creative  genius.  The  characters  in 
their  plays,  while  strongly  moral,  are 
vague.  We  may  agree  with  Karpeles 
that  Jewish  writers  for  the  stage  pos- 
sess marked  subjectivity,  which  pro- 
duces a  singleness  of  purpose  in  the 
pursuit  of  their  dramatic  ideals,  and, 
in  a  lower  degree,  cosmopolitanism. 
But  Heinrich  Heine's  criticism,  as  set 
forth  in  the  first  book  of  "The  Ro- 
mantic School,"  applies  to  them  with 
singular  force.  There  we  read: 

".  .  .  .  Every  person  in  his 
(Goethe's)  romances  and  dramas  is 
treated  by  him,  whenever  and  wher- 
ever he  occupies  the  stage,  as  if  he 
were  the  most  important  character. 
This  is  the  case,  too,  with  Homer  and 
with  Shakespeare.  Indeed,  in  the 
works  of  all  great  poets  there  are  no 
minor  characters;  every  one  is,  in  his 
place,  a  person  of  consequence.  Such 
poets  are  absolute  monarchs  attribut- 
ing no  independent  merit  to  any  man, 
but  regarding  him  in  accordance  with 
their  own  judgment.  .  .  ." 

X. 

The  modern  hatred  of  the  Jew, 
known  as  anti-Semitism  and  first  fully 
developed  in  Germany,  is  an  outgrowth 
and  manifestation  of  man's  wari';iiv 
with  and  final  defeat  by  the  powers 
of  darkness.  The  pessimistic  outlook 
on  life  engenders  natural  passions  in 


a  man's  breast:  he  compares  his  fate 
with  the  more  favored  one  of  the 
optimist  and  allows  his  mind  to  be 
clouded  to  the  demands  of  reason. 

In  the  years  succeeding  1848  the 
German  Jew  sought  to  sink  his  racial 
and  religious  identity  in  his  national 
patriotism,  which  found  expression  as 
a  rule  in  the  fiercest  chauvinism.  Dur- 
ing the  wars  of  unification  he  fought 
and  bled  in  the  armies  of  his  Chris- 
tian countrymen. 

Jews,  moreover,  bore  a  leading  part 
in  the  struggles  of  German  Protestants 
with  the  forces  of  Ultramontanist 
Rome  and  its  instrument,  the  Jesuits. 
Ludwig  Fulda,  in  "The  Talisman," 
praised  Bismarck,  the  protagonist  of 
anti-Semitism,  for  this  work  and  com- 
pared the  Jesuits  with  heathens. 

Bismarck,  in  his  war  with  the 
Jesuits,  relied  at  first  on  the  support  of 
Liberal,  i.e.,  Jewish  statesmen  like 
Ludwig  Bamberger  and  Eduard  Lns- 
ker.  But  their  followers  were  fluctuat- 
ing in  number  and  enthusiasm,  and 
Bismarck  finally  saw  himself  forced  to 
accept  the  aid  offered  by  the  Conserva- 
tive party  and  to  adopt  their  program. 
They  had  blind  faith  in  the  legend  of 
a  common  descent  for  all  Germans, 
and  already  began  to  dislike  the  Jews, 
the  men  of  another  stock,  as  the 
aristocracy  of  money,  who  aided 
France  in  recovering  from  the  effects 
of  the  war  of  1870-71  and  exploited 
the  theoretically  ingenuous,  German 
peasant.  Accordingly,  with  the  pub- 
lication of  the  articles  on  the  French 
loan  financed  by  German  Jewish 
bankers  of  Berlin — the  so-called 
Bleichroeder  -  Camphausen  -  Delbrueck 
affair — the  war  of  the  anti-Semites 
may  be  said  to  have  begun. 

The  struggle  was  bitter.  Since  1848 
the  Jews  had  fully  fancied  themselves 
a  part  of  the  German  nation,  and  their 
participation  in  the  movement  of 
German  culture  was  absolutely  un- 
trammeled.  The  rise  of  anti-Semi- 
tism involved  for  them  a  break  with 
their  immediate  past. 

Hermann  Sudermann  has  written  a 
play,  "Brother  Socrates  of  the  Storm," 
which  is  an  excellent  analytical  de- 
scription of  the  period  we  have  just 
been  considering.  Unpleasant  touches 
exist  here  and  there:  Dr.  Markuse, 
the  Jewish  rabbi,  a  veteran  of  1848, 
at  once  a  Jew  and  a  German,  eats 
ham;  and  one  of  the  characters  tells 
him  that  modern  German  society  needs 
the  rabbi,  for  who  else  would  supply 
the  never- failing  Jewish  jokes? 

Dr.  Markuse's  ideals  of  a  fraterniza- 
tion netween  Jew  and  Gentile  are 
shattered  in  a  measure  by  the  tales 
his  son  Siegfried  tells  him  of  life  at 
the  universities.  There  the  modern 
German  Jew  is  securely  confined  with- 
in the  new  Ghetto,  the  spiritual  Ghetto, 
by  his  Christian  jailer,  and  from  it 
there  is  no  escape  for  him.  This  is 
not  the  narrow,  squalid  street,  nor  the 
chains  and  the  sentries  of  the  old;  it 


1  ! 


•  is  in  ihe  scornful  laugh,  ihe  ex- 
cessively polite  note,  the  unreturued 
visit.  These  react  on  the  Jewish  tem- 
perament in  much  the  same  way  as 
Dr.  Theodor  Herw  has  described  in 
his  drama,  "The  New  Ghetto."  But 
Sudermanii  makes  the  father  reply  in 
a  cryptic  passage  embodying,  in  all 
probability,  the  dramatist's  solution  of 
The  Jewish  problem: 

".  .  .  .  If  it  be  true  that  the 
German  does  not  care  to  have  us  as 
Germans,  the  Russian  as  Russians  .  . 
— in  short,  that  the  world  would  be 
well  rid  of  us — we  should  become  that 
which  they,  the  races  of  men,  do  not 
wish  us  to  become.  We  should  pre- 
serve for  mankind  its  most  precious 
jewel — a  jewel  which  it  has  unwit 
tingly  neglected — man.  For  this,  our 
mission,  we  must  ever  be  ready.'' 

In  the  face  of  the  anti-Semitic  cam- 
paign many  Jews,  pushed  their  German 
chauvinism  to  doubtful  extremes.  Lud- 
wig  Jacobowski.  the  author  of  "Wer- 
ther  the  Jew,"  declared  that  he  wish- 
ed to  Be  first  a  German  and  then  a 
Jew.  Hieronynms  Lorm.  the  pen- 
name  of  the  Moravian  Heinrich  Lan- 
desmann,  a  tuneful  poet,  but  exceed- 
ingly pessimistic  in  his  novels  and 
popular  philosophy,  made  subjective 
use  of  the  main  anti-Semitic  argu- 
ments in  "The  Wandering  Craftsman." 
In  "Gorgonheads"  Franz  Held  (Herz- 
feld  in  reality)  told  the  story  of  Cheru, 
King  of  the  ancient  Cimbri,  and  his 
Jewish  wife.  In  consonance  with  Ger- 
manic customs  she  was  sacrificed  on 
her  husband's  funeral  pyre.  Recently, 
too,  Stefan  Zweig  in  "Life's  Wonder" 
produced  a  fine  psychological  tale. 
The  Jewress  who  was  the  model  for  a 
picture  of  the  Madonna  in  fancy  look- 
ed upon  Herself  as  one  with  the  paint- 
ed canvas.  She  met  her  death  in  the 
defense  of  the  artist's  creation — and 
by  implication  of  that  for  which  it 
stood — from  the  fury  of  an  iconoclastic 
mob. 

In  the  last  ten  years  the  reawaken- 
ing of  the  Jewish  consciousness,  which 
finds  its  practical  expression  in  the 
Zionist  movement  on  the  one  hand, 
and  the  love  of  the  Jewish  past,  his- 
torically and  linguistically,  on  the  oth- 
er, has  proved  to  be  a  powerful  motor- 
force  in  the  modern  German  literature 
of  the  Jews. 

It  is  true  that  Leopold  Freftind's 
volume  of  poems,  where  expression  is 
given  to  the  Zionist  hope,  was  pub- 
lished as  long  ago  as  1882.  But  the 
modern  Zionist  was  not  heard  of  in 
the  domain  of  poetry  much  before 
1S!).~>.  and  Berthold  Feiwel's  anthology 
did  not  appear  before  1903.  Muench 
hausen's  "Juda"  and  Goldberg's  "Light 
from  the  East."  the  latter  of  which 
contains  glowing  descriptions  of  Ori- 
ental life  and  scenes,  saw  the  light  of 
print  in  1901.  to  be  followed  two  years 
later  by  Theodor  Zlocisti's  mor- 
bidly pessimistic  volume,  "Homeward 
Bound."  The  poetry  of  these  writers. 


to  whom  Ziou  is  more  than  a  mere 
pious  wish,  is  inspired  by  an  intense 
love  of  their  race,  its  history  and  re- 
ligion; the  attitude  toward  life  of  these 
poets  is  hopeful,  in  theory,  and  opposes 
to  the  distinctly  German  cultural 
forces  a  markedly  Jewish  ideal. 

Thus,  Leo  Rafaels.  a  minor  poet 
sings: 

"Through   the  land  a  breath   is  blowing 

softly,  cooling. 
Striking    slumb'ring    hearts    ancf   waking 

young  and   old. 
Thy  breath  it  is,   thon  ever  young,  thou 

old  and  mighty  God." 

And   Israel   Auerbach   writes: 

"  'Know'st  thou  this  people?'     The  Lord 

said   unto   me — • 
'From  gloomy  graves   I'll   raise   them   to 

the   light! 

Withal  their  bones  lie  deeply  buried, 
I'll  set  them  up,  give  them  the  breath  of 

life; 
Withal    their    scatt'ring    North,     South, 

West  and  East, 
My  call  they'll  heed  in  time! 
No  corner  so  remote  I  cannot  strike 
From  them  its  binding,  cruel  chains; 
From  North  and  South,   from   the  most 

distant  shore 

['11  bear  them  home  on  eagles'  wings, 
To  blessed  Zion. — 
My  people — Israel!'  saith  the  Lord." 

In  recent  days,  barring  all  imagina- 
tive writing  which  finds  its  inspira- 
tion in  Zionism,  dramas  based  on  the 
tragedy  of  anti-Semitism,  or  turgid  his- 
torical novels  represent  all  that  is  pro- 
duced by  German  Jewish  men  of  let- 
ters. Max  Nordau's  "Doctor  Kohn" 
and  O.  E.  Lessing's  "Rebekka,"  with 
its  scenes  of  New  York  life,  are  ex- 
amples of  this  fact.  Even  the  nov- 
elists— Rosa  Pomerauz,  Pruchanski 
and  countless  others — are  obsessed  by 
fears  for  the  future  of  the  Jews.  They 
succumb,  too,  to  the  allurements  of- 
fered by  the  plots  and  the  literary  ma- 
terial of  Judaeo-German  writers,  and 
accept  Russo-Jewish  habits  of  thought 
and  ideals.  Accordingly,  they  content 
themselves  at  times  with  the  office  of 
the  translator,  and  interpret  Peretz, 
Spektor,  Frug  and  Gordon  for  German 
readers.  This  work  is  useful  and  these 
authors  are  men  of  vast  talents,  but 
are  we  not  justified  in  demanding  orig- 
inal, creative  work  from  the  present- 
day  possessors  of  literary  and  cultural 
traditions  running  back  one  thousand 
years? 

In  this  place  a  brief  reference  may 
be  made  to  Paul  Lindau's  "Countess 
Leah."  This  excellent  acting  play  is 
the  work  of  a  Christian,  and  describes 
modern  conditions  in  Germany  with 
unerring  accuracy.  It  demonstrates 
the  hatred  the  upper  classes  in  Ger- 
man society  bear  toward  the  Jew,  and 
to  what  lengths  they  will  travel — wit- 
ness its  theatrical  court  scene — in  at- 
tempting to  deprive  him  of  justice. 
Scholz's.  "The  Jew  of  Constance,"  an 
historical  drama  of  the  fifteenth  cen- 


12 


tury,  has  for  its  central  figure  Nasson, 
the  baptized  Jewish  pantheist,  who 
dies  to  save  his  people.  A  word,  too, 
may  be  bestowed  on  Jewish  humorists 
like  Cronbach,  and  writers  of  tales 
for  Jewish  children  like  Fanny  Neuda 
and  Rosa  Friedlaender. 

XI. 

In  the  foregoing  pages  we  have  en- 
deavored to  present  the  figure  of  the 
Jew  in  German  literature  in  its  prin- 
cipal outlines.  In  German  literature 
the  Jew  is  unique  because  in  no  other 
division  of  the  republic  of  letters  has 
he  been  so  fruitful  and  so  constant  a 
theme  of  discussion  and  exposition  by 
writers  of  every  shade  of  opinion,  ex- 
hibiting in  their  works  every  degree 
of  literary  merit.  His  figure  is  par- 
ticularly interesting  because  in  Ger- 
man-speaking lands  the  Jew — even  in 
the  earliest  days — sought  to  bear  his 
share  in  the  propagation  of  culture; 
and  he  thoroughly  assimilated  German 
thought  and  German  ideas  with  re- 
markable facility. 

The  last  remark  yields  a  striking 
commentary  on  the  position  of  the 
Jews  in  Germany  and  conversely  ex- 
plains the  attitude  of  the  governing 
powers  toward  them  at  every  stage 
of  German  political  development.  Dur- 
ing the  period  of  preparation,  when 
the  Jews  had  not  yet  become  imbued 


with  the  German  ideals,  they  lived  in 
peace.  Repression  followed  the  first 
faint  signs  of  a  dawning  culture  among 
them.  For  quite  a  long  period  the  Jew 
was  but  a  name  to  the  Germans  and 
only  at  the  commencement  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  did  he  seek  to  make  a 
place  for  himself  among  those  of  his 
Christian  neighbors  who  cherished  the 
literary  pursuit.  During  the  compara 
tively  short  epoch  of  revolutionary  en- 
lightenment— when  the  principle  of  the 
universal  brotherhood  of  man  was 
baptized  in  the  fire  of  the  days  of  1S4S 
— the  Jew  was  deemed  the  equal  in 
every  respect  of  the  Christian,  and 
Jewish  writers  attempted  to  prove  that 
the  differences  between  the  race  re- 
sided in  the  mere  externals  of  wor- 
ship. Anti-Semitism,  the  cause  of  so 
much  change  in  the  political  life  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  produced  re- 
markable results  in  German  literature. 
It  worked  a  change  in  the  position  of 
the  Jew  in  German  literature,  not  only 
from  the  point  of  view  of  Christian 
men  of  letters,  but  also  from  that  of 
the  Jews  themselves.  Finally,  Zionism 
appeared  upon  the  stage  of  the  history 
of  the  world,  and  in  its  invitation  to 
return  to  Palestine  presented  Jews  of 
every  shade  of  opinion  with  remark- 
able literary  themes  from  their  storied 
past. 

New   York,   January,    1907. 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


A     000  076  372     2 


